"I'm going to come back to West Virginia when this is over. There's something ancient and deeply-rooted in my soul. I like to think that I have left my ghost up one of those hollows, and I'll never really be able to leave for good until I find it. And I don't want to look for it, because I might find it and have to leave".----Breece D'J Pancake, in a letter to his mother.

Tyler Gobble

Rugged Encounter

after Kerry Howley

I long for a touch of reassurance from the universeI have been chronicling. I have this preferenceFor questionable, terrifying things. I lack sense

I say here in this snow cave where I lay beatingMy fist against the darkness. The first stagingWas my hand combing my hair back. How long

It has grown in this desert, my attempt to outgrowThis body altogether. That somehow the showTransforms the space. I am tumbling how

A child hugs a hill after kicking another in the head. The only plan—aiming the body towards insteadCompetent violence. With regularity it forgets

I am here at all. How skimpy is my little systemOf union, each an isolated machine, enough steamFor its next rugged encounter. Does not every being

Open mid-scene? One should not live to exceedA breath. None of us speak clearly, but one need Not understand to learn to choke or succeed.

Over and over again, something to summon cruelty Outside of this theater. A long moan translated melty Underwater two jellyfish singing, fractions of a seconds to try

In snake-charming, drawing a body before it has to run Off to pee. Each dents like my thrownness—the funOf having been heaved without preparation or a fair warning.

Of course the sounds changed. The sounds were complex. A moment ago bleeding from the brow and now fully fixed. I feel things. I am an entertainer, the horizon inspired to twitch.

Cologne Every Day

Monday

I saw a weasel open its jaw and he was eatingPop Rocks candy. And the toddler Went running right toward it, which is absurd and unreasonable, Both the running and the desire in general.

And you know a weasel would never harm a toddler, Though also I doubt my vision, How absurd and unreasonable it is. The toddler threw the candy at the weasel in the first place.

Tuesday

They were my kinfolk of lightningElectric lightening gone beyondThe energy in my reserve.

The babies’ granddaddies a-hollerin’WHO IS GONNA PAY FOR THIS LEAKY ROOF.

Friday

The one whose mind got read feels Intruded upon by the mind reader

Though he asked for itThough he paid the ten bucks with his hand

The mind that bulb he’s got wedged Protected by only his thick sky

Saturday

Flat on that stomach of yoursYou could not even beginTo guess the depth the water kids itself

Into, like a mirror, like a mirrorYou get too close after an oversized night.You wake up shivering. You

Could be on a highway to hell, but youCould hold on to your black bean salsaPatience to know for sure, and what then,

It is Hell or it is Texas Roadhouse.It is your mother’s birthday, and what thenIs the difference besides how my steak gets charred.

Sunday

I have never been a religious man, butI do believe it is importantTo wear cologne every day.

Every year, we'd mosey from my Hoosier homeland to my dad's childhood Carolina. My Uncle Cooter lived near this army surplus store and they'd let little TGOB loose in there to occupy an afternoon. I'd always emerge without my allowance but with some sort of age-inappropriate thing--a blowdart gun, a set of throwing knives that looked like playing cards, a deactivated grenade. Those were the days, I think.

Tyler Gobble is the host of Everything Is Bigger, a reading series in Austin, TX. He is currently a poetry fellow at the Michener Center for Writers. He has plopped out a chunk of chapbooks, and his first full-length collection, MORE WRECK MORE WRECK, is available from Coconut Books. He likes disc golf, porches, and bacon. More at tylergobble.com